Return to classes renews calls for end to school fees

Thousands of Calgary students began the new school year on Tuesday.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

Jackie Smith comforts her daughter, Jordan, on her first day of Grade 1 at St Thomas Aquinas Elementary School in Glamorgan on Tuesday.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

Marianna Shaw, from left, Grace Miller and Avery Fraser get reacquainted on the playground on the first day of Grade 4 at St Thomas Aquinas Elementary School in Glamorgan on Tuesday.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

Opposition parties of all stripes are once again demanding the Alberta government eliminate mandatory school fees, as thousands of students return to class this week and parents reach for their wallets.

“This has gotten out of hand,” said Bruce McAllister, Wildrose education critic. “September has become ‘Cheque-tember.’ And the more kids you have, the more that you pay.”

On Tuesday, the Wildrose launched an online petition calling for the government to prohibit fees in Alberta public, Catholic and charter schools.

McAllister said fees are a financial burden on parents and amount to a hidden tax imposed by school boards that are inadequately funded by the province.

School boards across Alberta have complained for years that per-student funding has not kept up with enrolment growth.

The Calgary Board of Education has seen its per-student funding drop from $10,077 in 2011 to $9,745 in 2014-15.

In May, CBE trustees approved an $8.9-million hike for busing, noon supervision and instructional materials for the 2014-2015 school year — in part to cover a $6-million budgetary gap that remained after the board drained its discretionary reserve funds.

That hike will see busing fees increase by as much as $330 this fall, while five-day noon-hour supervision will jump to $280.

Fees for noon supervision, busing and instructional materials accounted for roughly three per cent, or $30 million, of the board’s 2013-2014 budget, according to the Calgary Board of Education.

“(Fees) are a reality in our system,” said Brad Grundy, chief financial officer for the CBE. “If we had significantly more resources, maybe we may look at eliminating them as the most important thing.”

Grundy said no student will be denied access to an education because of an inability to pay a fee.

“If they can’t pay a fee then we can either waive those fees centrally or parents can go to their local school to have a conversation with the principal, and that principal is empowered to waive those fees,” he said.

Calgary’s Catholic School District managed to avoid increasing its fees for busing ($215) and noon supervision ($80) this year by dipping into its reserve funds.

Karen Lloyd, president for the Calgary Association of Parents and School Councils, said many parents are frustrated by the mandatory fees, yet are increasingly resigned to the incremental hikes.

“It’s like putting a frog in a boiling pot of water, it will jump out,” Lloyd said. “But if you put the frog in a pot of regular temperature water and turn the heat up, the frog will stay in the whole time and get cooked.”

Further, while school boards may offer to waive the fees to parents facing financial hardship, many parents find the process humiliating and are reluctant to apply, she added.

“Nobody wants to stand up and say, ‘Guess what? We can’t afford to pay,’ ” said Lloyd. “Most of them squeeze in other places, cough up the money and are frustrated by it because the pinch is pretty hard.”

McAllister said the province could eliminate school fees in part by cancelling the recent seven per cent raise to senior government bureaucrats.

“There are so many areas of waste,” McAllister said. “This government has become all about scandal and rewarding its own. We think the job of government is to listen to the taxpayer . . . in this case the noise is deafening . . . these taxes and hidden fees have gotten out of control.”

The NDP and Liberal parties have also called for the end to mandatory fees.

Those two parties have called for stable and predictable funding for school boards — which have seen per-student funding from the province decrease over the past several years — and for the province to introduce a progressive income tax system and higher corporate taxes.

Liberal education critic Kent Hehr said chronic underfunding of the province’s education system has forced many families to scrounge to make ends meet, with the average family paying $500 to $1,000 a year on fees.

“This government has known about school fees and watched them grow for years and sat on its hands,” Hehr said. “If the government wanted to do something about it, they have had every opportunity to do it.”

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